I’ve been doing an online yoga course, only for a few days now, and I’ve been trying to work out what makes the teaching so great. Besides the obvious charismatic teacher, the way that they present information it seems is paramount.

Like telling a story, the order in which you do things matters greatly. From watching and doing this class, I’ve started to think that truly the best thing to do to keep the students engaged and eager to learn, is to have them doing the target activity in some form or another right from the outset.

This acts as a sort of introduction to drag the students in, and makes the teaching more of a form of entertainment, that has the added benefit of teaching you something, rather than the other way round.

So from now on, I’m going to try and make my teaching as interactive as possible, rather than explaining things first. There will still be an explanation, only it will come after the students have made an attempt to learn without one.